After 12 Rejections, Apple Accepts App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes

Five years ago, I made a simple iPhone app. It would send you a push notification every time a U.S. drone strike was reported in the news.

Apple rejected the app three times, calling it “excessively objectionable or crude content.”

Over the years, I would occasionally resubmit the app, changing its name from Drones+ to Metadata+. I was curious to see if Apple might change its mind. The app didn’t include graphic images or video of any kind — it simply aggregated news about covert war.

At its core was a question: do we want to be as connected to our foreign policy as we are to our smartphones? My hypothesis was no. Americans don’t care about the drone war because it is largely hidden from view.

In 2014, after five rejections, Apple accepted the app. It remained in the App Store for about a year. According to Apple’s internal statistics, Metadata+ was downloaded by more than 50,000 people.

But the following September, Apple decided to delete the app entirely. They claimed that the content, once again, was “excessively objectionable or crude.”

Wreckage of a vehicle in which Mullah Mansour was allegedly traveling after it was hit by U.S. drone on May 22, 2016, in Balochistan, Pakistan.

Photo: Barkat Tareen/Getty Images

As an artist who works with data, I think the story of this app is about more than a petty conflict with Apple. It is about what can be seen — or obscured — about the geography of our covert wars.

For the past 15 years, journalists on the ground in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia have worked hard to uncover the contours of U.S. drone attacks — in some cases at their own peril. Filmmakers, academics, and attorneys have done important work documenting their ghastly aftermath. Websites like The Intercept have published whistleblower exposés about how the covert drone program clicks together.

But buried in the details is a difficult truth: no one really knows who most of these missiles are killing.

Because the particulars of the drone wars are scant, we only have ‘metadata’ about most of these strikes — perhaps a date, the name of a province, maybe a body count. Absent documentary evidence or first-person testimony, there isn’t much narrative to speak of.

The name ‘Metadata’ has a double meaning: the app both contains metadata about English-language news reports, and it refers to the basis on which most drone strikes are carried out. (As Gen. Michael Hayden famously said, “we kill people based on metadata.”)

Smartphones have connected us more intimately to all sorts of data. As Amitava Kumar put it recently, “The internet delivers ugly fragments of report and rumor throughout the day, and with them a sense of nearly constant intimacy with violence.” Yet information about drone strikes — in Apple’s universe — had somehow been deemed beyond the pale.

What would it mean to be more connected to our wars? Might our phones allow us to think more constellationally?

With a president who plans to lift the Obama-era constraints on drone strikes even further, declaring parts of Yemen and Somalia as “areas of active hostilities,” I’m glad that Apple has decided to stop blocking a news app.

If anything about the app is “excessively objectionable or crude,” perhaps it’s the airstrikes themselves.

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I had a remembrance last week It started me searching google for US war impacts globally.
During the Vietnam war, I was in elementary/middle school. As I recall, there was coverage of the war every night on the news. My Father in the recliner behind my beanbag chair was in favor of the war.I don’t believe he was ever swayed to oppose the war by the news coverage. But this is what swayed me: Each night the numbers of killed and missing American soldiers were listed. Those steady futile numbers still haunt me.

It’s ridiculous that people might be offended by the app bc they won’t associate it with good feeling. You all realize we are bombing a county killing many innocent civilians, creating another power vacuum, breeding more terrorists. An app like this would bring a faraway war to our psyches. I want the app! I would pay!

Search the store using the terms “drone strike”. There are lots of apps but they appear to be for “entertainment ” and not political awareness. There’s even one called Airborne Killing Machine which is somehow not objectionably crude to Apple even though the name clearly is.

Nice try again, Josh Begley. If you ever find a caring home for your pet app, consider adding an extra feature for each drone strike: its price tag. The calculations could be made automatically, sparely: so much for a Hellfire strike, so much for a Reaper, etc. It’s an easy algorithm, I imagine, for a whiz like you. The main costs per missile are constant.

a group of volunteers, working in the same fashion as law profs and students now do for death row inmates, might do more detailed calculations on the price tag for each drone strike.

The news about 10 or 20 brown people wasted in a strike is but a sad, small number; and, moving on, what’s for dinner tonight? However, the green dollars wasted again and again is a much bigger number, impressive when all costs are taken into account: training, flight time, amortized drone cost, maintenance, the fuel, the missile itself and the wages of the people who pull triggers. Might that larger number with the almighty dollar sign in front of it, displayed for each strike, grab more attention among the iPhone literati?

Freedom of speech does not extend to iPhones. Apple wants its customers to associate their products with pleasurable feelings. So it is only natural for them to block access to any apps or information that might generate negative emotions. Perhaps if Mr. Begley marked the strikes with happy faces his new app would pass muster.

Well, what else to expect from companies that collaborated with the government and its agencies? without collaboration, apple would stay poor company, the same as facebook, microsoft, etc.
The apple store is not the only place to publish the app, one example can be the guardian project. their apps can be downloaded from their website.
by the way, I don’t use smartphones any more, rarely I use the phone, just to see what is the time :)

One of the requirements to be a successful corporate is to propagate stupidity and distance people from reality. Apple, by removing this app from their store, is doing exactly that, creating an alternative universe where facts are discouraged and even banned.

Why seek Apple’s approval? If you were serious about this you would release on Android and open source it for others to adapt to other platforms. At least publish an API to the data – or are you seeking to profit from drone strikes?

Fantastic, though now app-parently instantly defunct. Can we get the app, for iphones AND android units that predict domestic (regardless of nation) drone strikes with some certainty as to date(s), time(s) and target(s)? In that, presently, only our friends and neighbors and fellow citizens far away, allegedly a danger to us all anywhere else are gettin’ the drone sudden smackdown treatment, might you or I be next, and MUCH sooner than anticipated? After all, all these little “wars” are undeclared now, aren’t they? And just for fun, can anybody provide or direct us to the app that illuminates the nature of creation of the numerous and seemingly sporadic vehicle-size scorch marks on many rural highways? Or might this data only be available to persons further up the Cloud Ladder Food Chain…?

I try my hardest to explain the context of all things “American Disaster Style” emerge from an embedded War Economy. The cry USA USA and jingoism while pushing those drone buttons isnt performed by the loudest raging redneck or foaming at the mouth commie hating colonel, the population at large bear responsibilty for the mayhem at home and abroad by their willfull indifference. Sure todays America is trying its best to morph into a very large gulag however with a few clicks of laptop anyone can read around the totalising media pouring from state organisations . My explanatory efforts fail miserably as the power of State Sponsored ideological bullshit and voided omissions in a servile media are too easily eaten up by lazy Fast Food News Consumers. I truly think we in the West live in societies of stupidity on an epic scale. Rant over.

Just by reading this comment the reader gets a free app which alerts them to every time a corporation does something which doesn’t support or further entrench the decades-long establishment corruption of the USA.

You don’t even need a phone. The absence of alerts is proof it’s working perfectly.

It wouldn’t surprise me that Apple may have agreed to this now – as other commenters have noted – because while Obama’s kindly visage covered a multitude of oligarchical sins it is now in the establishment’s interests to portray Trump as the only current problem (just as it was eager to demonize the Bush-era evils as reducible to the malevolence of “Darth Cheney”), since Trump serves as such a convenient distraction (as a singular villain) from the blatant continuation of endemic corporatist warmongering that has comprised every succeeding administration for ages.

Apple have reversed their decision again, maybe because they realized everyone still subliminally associates drone strikes with Obama in spite of all the attempts to make him seem so nice and Trump so nasty. Can’t have the continuity of corruption be so obvious.

I very much like the idea and I appreciate your writing about it. I would however adjust the caption under the photograph that presently seems to imply that Mullah Mansour travelled in a car that had previously been hit in a drone strike, which seems unlikely.

I don’t care because I don’t have an Apple phone. Or a “smart” phone. I don’t use “App Stores” with mysterious Men In Charge telling me what I can have and under what conditions. I don’t envy these things. There are things that the commercialists only make available there, and I don’t want them. I don’t want any of the crap they patent nowadays no matter what it is because it’s all useless spy shit. We have seen technology go past the edge of philosophy, and now technology is strictly defined as “a tool that allows the powerful to use their resources to exercise more control and surveillance over the powerless” That ought to be what you see when you look the word up in the dictionary.

I didn’t follow your link, I don’t know if you charge a fee per download or not. Either you’re getting paid to make an entertainment interface that allows m’lud Apple to branch out into drone spectator entertainment, or you’re doing it for free, I don’t care. Show me a real site on the university geeks’ internet that collects data by a published algorithm and processes in a way that people can track and take part in, then I’ll be impressed. In the meanwhile I’d rather look at a Wikipedia article on the airstrikes no matter how incomplete and confused it may be, with the potential to help, than play host to some company’s app made out of gold and platinum and precious gems that is permitted to sing the sad song of the ongoing slaughter now that Trump has taken it over because they think he might interfere with their low-paid labor.

Given the linguistic construction of your post, I’m going to guess that you’re from a generation that accepts commercialization of all technology, all means of communication and the vast majority of social interaction with little or no question.

You would be well advised to remedy that by becoming more inquisitive about forces that shape and, effectively, control so much of your life and your interaction with the world.

You guys were so insecure about losing what little authority you had. Now everything is organized and secure just the way your generation wanted to keep it. And even better, you guys just kick the can and tell us to fix all the problems you guys created. Win-win for the retirement communities!

“Talking bout my generation”.. ya know, don’t you that lil song was written over 60 years ago and still relevant today..wait until your 30’s..life gets better as you age..as long as you stay healthy..mentally and physically..all good things and bad things too…in moderation..Peace out

And thanks man. I’m in my 30’s and couldn’t be happier. You’re absolutely right. I quit drinking a few years ago, eat healthy, and work out regularly. I quit social media, I don’t watch TV anymore, and I got out of the “doing things” trap. I learned a long time ago everyone is just as lost as everyone else in this whole life thing we’re doing, so I stopped taking things too seriously.

LOL! I didn’t choose to be born into this crap society you feel so guilty about. I just have to live in it. And after I stopped taking things seriously I really enjoy life now.

But hey, what would the world be without pedantic curmudgeons like you reminding me how unhappy I could be? It’s people like you who remind me to treat life like the cosmic joke it is or else you become a bitter troll on the Internet.

You’re lying, you know, to yourself and to the rest of us. You are so angry and bitter that you jumped into attack mode in response to a reference to generational differences in experience that wasn’t in any way directed at you.

In point of fact, it’s pretty clear that you are unhappy, taking “things” very seriously, and that your emotional reaction to anything that upsets you is on a hair trigger.

“I didn’t choose to be born. . .” is the angry, frustrated cry of a child or adolescent. And the chances that your experience of society is “crap” in comparison with that of tens of millions of Americans, and of several billions of others around the world, are exceedingly slim.

You sure you never worked for the NSA? You’re pretty good at building a character profile from a few comments on the Internet. Maybe you were a prosecutor for the State? Definitely lawyer speak either way. Hmmm… ;)

Stupid and bright people come in all ages, I have learned (from this site, no less), and in point of fact Doug comes across as a remarkably conscientious and inspiring older person in spite of the fact that he’s grumpily impatient with sloppy thinking (which can appear quite mean, but isn’t really). I think if you just move on from this now you’d find ultimately you have a lot in common with him, particularly in terms of philosophical depth; I know I do, and I’ve been known to embody some unfair ageism myself in my more crabby moods.

I’m one of those elders he’s ‘sniping’ at. Or not. As an anti-war, anti-state libertarian, I can testify that MS is spot on about a large number of my generation. While the antiwar movement did help to end the Vietnam war, it didn’t change the basic equation, and many more in my generation were firmly establishment-oriented. Why do you think the halls of power are still overflowing with the putrid stench of the warmongers? Money and power, baby!

Who was interested in defending authority? I was out protesting Scientology with “anonymous” people from the net over their censorship tactics a decade before V for Vendetta was in the theaters. In 1991 I was against the war, though I have to admit I didn’t really believe some of the commie propaganda newspapers I read about the Taliban freedom fighters throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women.

There are no generations, there are only people. You find some of all kinds in every cohort, and only the Grim Reaper really knows which “generation” we’ll be counted with in the end when it matters.

What is his point exactly? It does kind of sound like a whining “oh those dumb kids and their phones” argument to me (and I’m well into my 50s). It sounds like he’s trying to equate this independent app maker with a giant corporation. But Begley like he’s only trying to inform the public about the enormous number of drone strikes carried out daily.
I sincerely don’t understand what he’s trying to say.

I can’t answer for Wnt, but consider the reality of a technological environment in which a majority of citizens (those who are sufficiently privileged) interact with the world largely through devices that are under the ultimate control of a tiny number of (two, really) worldwide corporate giants and that control extends even to the programs that may be installed on those devices.

So thorough is this control that it is newsworthy when one of those giants refuses to permit the distribution of an “app” because of, apparently, political considerations. And it really is newsworthy, because so many know whatever they know about the world they live in primarily based upon the content delivered by those corporate-controlled devices.

It’s not the dumb kids and their phones. It’s the captive citizenry and the Bosses’ phones and content.

I’m saying Begley’s “app” is/would be under Apple’s control anyway – it might be his effort, but it’s effectively their app, to say or not say anything with as they alone please. I’m not even saying I hold out hope for a Linux phone… I’d be happy just to see a phone that the users control what they can run without some kind of “jailbroken” grey-area borderland under constant threat.

Let’s be clear – this new generation that defines itself by the corporations that own it is still unimaginably lucky compared to those intended in the pace of technological “progress”. I mean, anyone see THIS -http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-hy-musk-neuralink-20170328-story.html ? They’re already talking about trying to put their programming directly in the heads of the worker-slaves, while amusingly saying it is a way to “beat” the machines by becoming one themselves. And of course the workers are to take to this eagerly because in this shiny new world of technological progress there will surely be no patience for anyone to learn real ideas the old fashioned grey-matter way, what with all the chance for ideological discord and disobedience! Who would hire such a savannah ape, even if he were trained in some archaic academy of higher learning?

And those poor schmucks will surely blame the current generation with its stupid phones in the same way as some above, but with a damn sight more justification. We have the nukes. We can end this. We can annihilate the global population, crash the global economy and destroy the progress of technology until such time as people see fit to find a future with humans in it. We don’t have to go … there. What is not better than there?

“We” could have truly open source phones, a community-controlled and owned Internet, etc., of course, but the target market of the late 90s and early 2000s was so eager for the flashing lights and bells and whistles that notions of control, and the consequences thereof, either never entered their minds or were brushed aside as paranoid or arising from “mere” neo-Luddism. So, we have what we have: an Owners’, Bosses’ and authoritarians’ delight.

A whole fucking culture happily “living” on Twitter and Facebook like contented steers in a feedlot.

I don’t care because I don’t have an Apple phone. Or a “smart” phone. I don’t use “App Stores” with mysterious Men In Charge telling me what I can have and under what conditions. I don’t envy these things.

Excellent plan.

If you just ignore things steadfastly enough, those things won’t matter and eventually they’ll go away.

Like an obnoxious kid or a quarrelsome partner.

This strategy seems to have worked marvelously well with climate change and endemic racism.

And tomorrow we will finally reverse ocean acidification simply by ignoring it.

I love your last sentence here, Josh, and just a week ago or so recommended your Twitter account @Dronestream to a commenter here. Between you and Micah I’m almost considering an iPhone I can’t really afford.

Why “drone” strikes? How is it confirmed that a UAV is involved and not a regular attack jet? Why not all strikes by aircraft? What difference does it make to the person on the receiving end of a missile if the pilot is 1000 miles away or 5 miles away? Do people think that fighter pilots fly in at ground level to check their target and drop bombs like it’s WW2?

Whether it’s a UAV or a jet fighter the same weapons are used and nearly all are remote. Guided by GPS, lasers or cameras from miles away to their targets, yet somehow it would be more civilized if the co-pilot was electronically steering a camera-guided missile from a high altitude miles to target they cannot look in the eye either? Is a self-guided Tomahawk missile launched from 25 miles away less egregious than a UAV delivered Hellfire missile?

If someone is going to die by a targeted strike then an unmanned aircraft is not only cheaper, but reduces the risk of airmen being killed who would be performing the exact same role regardless. The loss of whom would be mourned in the USA more than civilian casualties.

The problem is the conflicts America becomes involved in. Unmanned vehicles or manned vehicles, it’s not the method that should generate outrage but the result. If America is going to choose to go to war then people are going to die. Which vehicle we choose to kill people with is irrelevant to those that are going to die. If you support the initial action then the source of your indignation should not be where the gunner is sitting.

Josh Begley: “What would it mean to be more connected to our wars? Might our phones allow us to think more constellationally?”

Apples on again off again discomfort with your drone victim mapping app is not dissimilar to the permanent blinders BushBama placed on Americans shielding them from photos or video of our primarily economically disenfranchised all volunteer LGSBTQ soldiers coming home in a boxes. After all there ain’t no time to wonder why whoopee we’re all going to die.

Even while Snowden shared with us that feeds of real time drone strikes had an almost recreational aspect (just one more monitoring window open on a busy workstation) among IC an military personnel the TPTB under Barack Hussein incongruously concluded your App (even while populated solely by data derived from endemic undercounts in press reports) posed an at least variable threat to continuing complacency among the electoratti.

That is of course the same continuing complacency the IC and their elected and appointed officials prefer the electoratti continue to hold toward myriad CIA led foreign military interventions. To this end the complacency of the US population toward our foreverwar was further enhanced by embedding reporters among military units. This served to establish an espirit de corp between the press an such embedded units ensuring more collegial less adversarial reporting on the wider conflict and discouraging any deeper reflection on the deep states frequent role using false flag attacks to foment a conflict, or then arming both sides in an armed conflict or their role in perpetuating conflict even while 6 out of 7 sides are at the table seeking to end one.

However with a president Trump planning to lift the Obama-era constraints on drone strikes even further, declaring parts of Yemen and Somalia as “areas of active hostilities,” it is actually almost refreshing to hear Apple has greenlighted your drone kill app going forward.

There is a strange but satisfying congruity to Apples decision to now disregard drone victim map apps as “excessively objectionable or crude” at the outset of a Presidency many here on the TI discussion boards would no doubt characterize as “objectionable and crude.”

“If anything about the app is “excessively objectionable or crude,” perhaps it’s the airstrikes themselves.”

Question: After downloading the app and viewing some of the updates, I was unable to see links to the news reports upon which they were based. Can that be added, or is there a setting that I need to change?

Josh Begley: “What would it mean to be more connected to our wars? Might our phones allow us to think more constellationally?”

Apples on again off again discomfort with your drone victim mapping app is not dissimilar to the permanent blinders BushBama placed on Americans shielding them from photos or video of our primarily economically disenfranchised all volunteer LGSBTQ soldiers coming home in a boxes. After all there ain’t no time to wonder why whoopee we’re all going to die.

Even while Snowden shared with us that feeds of real time drone strikes had an almost recreational aspect (just one more monitoring window open on a busy workstation) among IC an military personnel the TPTB under Barack Hussein incongruously concluded your App (even while populated solely by data derived from endemic undercounts in press reports) posed an at least variable threat to continuing complacency among the electoratti.

That is of course the same continuing complacency the IC and their elected and appointed officials prefer the electoratti continue to hold toward myriad CIA led foreign military interventions. To this end the complacency of the US population toward our foreverwar was further enhanced by embedding reporters among military units. This served to establish an espirit de corp between the press an such embedded units ensuring more collegial less adversarial reporting on the wider conflict and discouraging any deeper reflection on the deep states frequent role using false flag attacks to foment a conflict, or then arming both sides in an armed conflict or their role in perpetuating conflict even while 6 out of 7 sides are at the table seeking to end it.

However with a president Trump planning to lift the Obama-era constraints on drone strikes even further, declaring parts of Yemen and Somalia as “areas of active hostilities,” Its actually almost refreshing to hear Apple has greenlighted your drone kill app going forward.

There is a strange but satisfying congruity to Apples decision to now disregard drone victim map apps as “excessively objectionable or crude” at the outset of a Presidency many here on the TI discussion boards would no doubt characterize as “objectionable and crude.”

“If anything about the app is “excessively objectionable or crude,” perhaps it’s the airstrikes themselves.”

Apple is doing what they have always done. They follow consumer popular opinion. They care about their profit sheet and public opinion of their business, do you really believe an Apple director suddenly declared “Hey, let’s let all those apps in that make the President look bad now that it is Trump”. No, that didn’t happen.

Apple is following data, and their data tells them whether an app will sit well with consumers. Before this app didn’t fit that, but now it does. Right now, heightened criticism of the President is popular and sits well with consumers. That’s all it takes for them to change their mind.

If you’ve ever worked at these big tech firms, you would know that profit is ultimate king despite whatever their PR/Marketing is trying to make you believe about their “values”. I guarantee you plenty of Trump supporters at Apple btw.

Thank GOD there’s a Republican in the White House, so “liberals” (leftists) and “progressives” (regressives) can oppose drone strikes, military action and any and all executive policies again. Making American great, one hypocrite at a time.

Well, now at least I understand why the indispensable Metadata app always seemed to be well more than a day late and a dollar short.

I’m hoping that it has been updated to provide more timely disturbing event logs than it was. Not that I’m actually interested in seeing them, but I think everyone should have this app to be reminded of the visionary failures the drone strike policy represents.

Nice to have an American corporation allow the ugly truth to be known.
A lot of our heroic “warfighters” are sitting in their comfy chairs outside of Las Vegas, directing weapons of mass destruction onto the backs of civilians.
Then these “heroes” go home to the wife and kiddies, have a nice dinner, then go back to work and slaughter some more babies.
That’s state-sponsored terrorism at work.

It’s also a story about how phony Democrats have become. At least the GOP is honest about their hate for anyone outside of their immediate circles. I have no doubt that corporate/3rd Way Democrats and the Pentagon were notified about the app. Now, it’s ok to hate civilian deaths again.

This is why Dems are failing. You can’t claim to be the party of the people, then, collude with institutions to protect the most inhuman policies. I’m just speculating, of course.

Wow..sitting here sipping on my morning cup of coffee, checking out the map of Yemen, where the coffee ($12.50 @half-pound) I’m sipping came from; Mocha Sanani , a single source coffee, grown in the mountains in NW Yemen..Sitting here wondering how many farmers, farmers’ family members, etc..who picked the beans that made the coffee I’m drinking, are still alive..and how much of the $12.50 I pay to Peet’s every other week, goes to these people
Thanks for the app..

I think you’re correct that most people simply don’t want to know, but if they do ever stop and give it consideration, it’s great to know your app is available to help people see the realities of US foreign policy .

Josh Begley, Thank You for Your service. Now one can at least know what and where even if the why is still denied US. We do not need classified operational details but require and should demand the basic information on who and why we are killing people with our tax dollars. Our elected representatives and MSM have abrogated their duty and responsibility to give US the basic information to maintain a Republic; wherein the citizenry is aware, acknowledges and accepts responsibility for the acts prescribed by our government and we finance. We are paying for it we should own it and demand the truths we need to accept or reject killing in our name with our money. When the truth is presented and We the people judge it responsible a lot of killing can be stopped. However, the sedition runs deep and many in the government, MSMs and citizenry have abrogated responsibility to be inform and act. What we have in place has and will fail US. We need a new new deal.

Secret – we will not allow you to know the truth. . . it will hurt us or our image in the eyes of the world…..WE don’t torture – and we destroyed the tapes against court orders to maintain them…Secret Afghanistan – Iraq Over fifteen years and counting I apologize for the use of that word – the costs are SECRET IN CAPITAL LETTERS /counting is such a bad word.
Secret…Where was our latest air strike? Libya? Syria? Yemen? Air Strikes are expensive ( I came close to saying very expensive) blood, sweat. tears – lives -maiming – injuries…..
The dollars and non-sense of the money trail – – as our politicians cut the social programs of our citizens safety nets… BUT “WE the PEOPLE” can not get any accounting Secret??
WHAT DOES IT COST – – DOLLARS – BLOOD – LIVES –
Washington will tell you we will win at any cost – because the people are not paying any attention – and Washington excludes the TRUTH
George H. W. Bush said very clearly “WE Will Prevail” repeated by (an echo??)
George W. Bush also said clearly “WE Will Prevail” – the echo continues
Barrack Obama said “WE Will Prevail”……..BUT –
TRUTH – JUSTICE – the AMERICAN WAY . . . . it’s a SECRET

It is much worse than Viet Nam . . and there is no accounting BLINDLY PAYING FOR UNKNOWN… Donald Trump wants to increase the military budget another 52 billion dollars without any explanation, and the Republican Congress may very well go along with it….
WE ARE NOW A DEBTOR NATION – – MY BUDGET DEMANDS THAT I KNOW WHERE MY MONEY GOES……

Congrats on getting it up and available. The rich and powerful would want objectionable information blocked or deleted, are gaining a choke hold over the avenues that information is distributed – and of course would find those things working against their interests “objectionable”. Obviously Apple management has been having difficulties here and was probably leaned on by the previous administration (why else deny it, then approve it, then remove it).

Best to grab the app while its still available – who knows how long this will last (how could this be spun/justified by current admin? Could they order its removal since it displays location of prior strikes, endangering security…).

” Could they order its removal since it displays location of prior strikes, endangering security…).”

Since it only displays post strike data available from public sources, they would not have cause to do so. However, what actually happens likely does not seem to depend on sanity, at least in this administration.